Ten-Word Review

Not your favorite film of the year, I take it?
The trailer looked like another example of “How much CGI can we cram in here?” Was I wrong?

Most Marvel films are bright and sugary confections that evaporate from memory once you’ve made it to the car park
Maybe it’s because the comic book superhero universe never took hold when I was a youngster (by the time I was 11, the “comic books” I was reading in bed, under the covers, by flashlight, was Mad magazine), they’ve never much appealed to me. The only one of the recent superhero movies I’ve watched all they way through was the first Iron Man, mostly because I like Robert Downey Jr., and it was on HBO when they had a “free weekend” promotion.

imagine a glib, disjointed, largely unfunny parody of a Marvel film
I stand vindicated.

As I said, the film seems to think it’s a comedy, and is pitched as a comedy, but the audience I saw it with weren’t laughing.
Oh, like Desperately Seeking Susan.

Since you were disappointed by the actual Marvel offering, perhaps you’d enjoy this? “American Captain”, a comic by Steve Rogers. While the end comes on suddenly (as you might expect from a tumblr comic visible only through the Wayback Machine), it’s an interesting and unusual take on the Avengers until that point.

It’s not me! I checked preview and everything. Typepad is upset at the idea of a link that has another “http” in the middle.
Tell you what, get there from here, which is how I found it anyway.

It’s presumably very funny. But only to North Americans.
“Airplane”, which I thought juvenile and un-funny even when I was a kid, also gets 97%. Americans love that type of humour.

Americans love that type of humour.
Benny Hill used to be popular here, too

Huh. I tried posting HTML that was not on fire. It appears the comment form ate it entirely rather than just chewing it up a bit. David, is it visible in the spam filter or something?

Too bad. Chris Hemsworth (Thor) has always delivered a great, understated comic performance that made the Thor series one of my favorites. He’s got a great delivery for that. Sounds like the scriptwriters boxed him in into a different role this time.

Thank you for saving me from wasting my time and money. Pity, as it looked good in the trailer. The problem with superhero films is that they’re either outstanding, like Iron Man, or they suck epically, like Superman Returns. There is no middle ground. Having said that, SR was a very stylish film – its neo-Art Deco aesthetic was very well done. I just wish it had been a good film as well as a stylish one.

Pity, because I like Chris H. and the previous films.
I’m finding, being an old fart, that my sense of humor sometimes runs counter to the RT scores. I loved the two Zoolander movies, for example, and thought “Alex and Emma” was a charming, albiet flawed movie.
Kinda reminds me of the MST3K “Laserblast” episode, where the bots point out that Leonard Maltin gave the movie 2.5 stars (when it was clearly 0.5), and all the other movies it was better than. (“Yes, ‘My Dinner With Andre,’ worse than ‘Laserblast.'”)

“Airplane”, which I thought juvenile and un-funny even when I was a kid, also gets 97%. Americans love that type of humour.
Surely, you can’t be serious?

David doesn’t like Airplane?
This was a bad week to give up drinking.

they suck epically, like Superman Returns.
I don’t think SR was epically bad. I see exactly what they were trying to do, and I could debate whether it’s a good take on the character. I think they failed at what they were trying, in part because of perhaps of being too faithful to the source. But it wasn’t epically bad.
I thought Man of Steel was epically bad. Mostly because it had such potential, and because Zach Snyder clearly hates the character. This is something I’ve observed a great deal of late, is writers/directors working in a medium or genre they clearly hate and want to deconstruct until there’s nothing good left.
“Airplane”, which I thought juvenile and un-funny even when I was a kid
Like most Zucker Brothers and Mel Brooks films, it’s both extremely topical and you have to have a fair bit of familiarity with the things they’re lampooning. The modern equivalent would be, say, Hail Caesar. If you don’t know a fair bit about the Hollywood studio system of the 1950’s, most of the jokes aren’t going to work.

The problem with superhero films is that they’re either outstanding, like Iron Man, or they suck epically, like Superman Returns.
You could say they’re the ginger girl of movies. Or is that racist?

So, it’s no Deadpool then.
No. And the thing’s bad in a strange way. It’s gaudy but boring. Basically, there’s a balance problem. Instead of the usual juggling of Earth-rumbling drama and clever quips, Ragnarok leans too heavily on comedy, and the comedy on offer is just too weak to take the load. For each of the four or five decent gags, most of which have already been seen, there are a dozen really feeble and repetitive ones that just fall flat and should never have made the final cut. I generally forgive a couple of misfires, but when the misfires are well into double figures, and half of them are variations of ‘stepping-on-a-rake-and-being-hit-in-the-face,’ then something’s gone wrong.

@ Chester: Here is the gladiator reference, at around 1.44.

Words sometimes have more than one meaning.

I need explaining about the Gladiator reference.
My point exactly. If you don’t know what Airplane! is lampooning, the jokes don’t work.
When the pilot asks Billy an assortment of unusual questions, the implication is that the pilot’s gay and is grooming the kid. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, there were a lot of very schlocky Italian “sword and sandal” gladiator and Greek myth B-movies shown as the second feature at the drive-in – the various Hercules movies, and an assortment of other forgettable ones. These movies starred bodybuilders with no body hair, wearing little more than leather straps, loincloths and copious amounts of oil, leading to the inevitable camp homoerotic insinuations.
In short, “do you like movies about gladiators, Billy?” translates to “do you like watching muscular half-naked men covered in oil”.
And I don’t care how much you like Airplane, or that I am meant to because it is a classic.
I thought it was funny when I was 14. It and its ilk – Hot Shots Part Deux, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Spaceballs, and the Adam Sandler ouevre – leave me nonplussed these days.
Although I will admit Sandler’s much better as a producer than a comedian. Hotel Transylvania? That’s a movie about post-holocaust Jewish persecution in drag as a kid’s film. o_O
I run an MCU RPG on line
Free text, MWP’s Marvel Heroic, or Classic TSR MSH?

My point exactly. If you don’t know what Airplane! is lampooning, the jokes don’t work.
OK. But that doesn’t explain Rotten Tomatoes 97% rating. Because I don’t imagine all those ratings are from people who are equally au fait with the jokes’ underlying meaning.
I work with a really nice Canadian guy, and he loves movies like Airplane! He’s well read and intelligent, but there really does seem to be a different sense of humour in North America. Hence the success of Adam Sandler movies.

but if you enjoyed Thor: The Dark World
I’m not at all sure that anyone did.

[…] there really does seem to be a different sense of humour in North America.
You don’t say?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM5_dgKDsrc

Hey, Alex! How’s Rebecca?

The apparent popularity of Saturday Night Live is utterly inexplicable.
That show hasn’t been good since the nineties…

Tim Blair brings us more insanity in US colleges…
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/tim-blair/caution-speech-ahead/news-story/def763c48367c2d9dba0d271ef619ae0

The apparent popularity of Saturday Night Live is utterly inexplicable.
That show hasn’t been good since the nineties…
I’d almost say seventies. In the eighties we used to marvel that it was still on and wondered what goods Lorne Michaels might have had on NBC execs.

As far as Benny Hill, for all the complaints of Ohmighod!!!! He’s so crude and disgusting!!!!!!
Thanks for those clips. Benny was immensely talented, just one of the many casualties in the 1980s of ‘alternative comedy’, a movement mainly of university-educated finger-waggers who descended uninvited to hector the British public out of their sexism and racism. There were an awful lot of babies thrown out with the bathwater, and very little of what replaced it deserved to be there on merit. This was an age when several rather successful comedians’ stand-up routines revolved around screeching ‘Thatcher!’ or ‘I hate men!’

I have to say, I’m not much of a fan of superhero films. I quite liked the first Spiderman with Toby Maguire and Batman Begins wasn’t bad, and I did enjoy Ironman II in the cinema, but otherwise I find them rather silly. The early Batmans I found silly, and when I watched The Dark Knight only yesterday evening, I found it rather childish and silly. I’ve seen most of the superhero films and I find them dull as hell: a flat storyline with special effects which mean nothing. I reckon they should make a film of Bananaman, then quit altogether.

Have a pickled egg.
What will it turn me into?

The early Batmans I found silly, . . .
A friend and I strolled out of the first post ’60s attempt at a movie of The Batman, with very definite assessments that we could do better blindfolded and with an arm tied behind us. My impression of what’s followed is that nothing ever got better, or even tried.
My read is that the HollywoodIsh types keep going with We Are To Be Seen Creating Great Cinema, cue echoes there, and, ah, No. The Batman can wind up getting called Great Cinema, and I expect someone will get it done, but only while realizing and showing the basic and unchanging bit of A Mystery Being Solved By A Detective . . . . The Batman is basically and no more than Phillip Marlowe meets Hercule Poirot, without the scotch or the mustache. The bit about the billionaire doing the funding merely allows the detective to keep disappearing into the shadows.

Oh, don’t fuss. There’s a crash cart on stand-by.
Another British expression I had to look up to confirm my suspicions of its meaning:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_cart

The fact that there can be a post and multiple comments, from people who can read and compose coherent sentences, about a cgi infested movie derived from a comic book, a fucking jesus h fucking christ comic book, amply demonstrates that western civ is doomed.
I am beginning to hope the muslims win.
Let it fucking burn.

The fact that there can be a post and multiple comments, from people who can read and compose coherent sentences, about a cgi infested movie derived from a comic book, a fucking jesus h fucking christ comic book, amply demonstrates that western civ is doomed.
a) It seems you haven’t paid much attention to everything else on the site;
b) Lighten up, Francis.

I enjoyed Battleship
First world problem I know, but I’m trying to think of something that’s disappointed me more this year and I’m really struggling
That includes the recorder scene in Alien: Whatever
I’m certainly going to remember this day when you next post a film review

I’m certainly going to remember this day when you next post a film review
Heh. I’m complicated, alright?

an aggregate of what DC Comics published for years on end
My point is rather that 1) It’s not possible to film an “aggregrate” of what DC comics published for years on end because the character is fundamentally, qualitatively different depending on who’s writing him, what book he appears in, and what decade it is; and b) the movies have already been remaining fairly faithful to specific visions of the character at specific points in the publishing history.
a cgi infested movie derived from a comic book
Comic books – well, comic book movies – are a multi-billion dollar global industry. How and why that happened, and how and why it’s currently failing, says some rather interesting things about the economy, the zeitgeist, and the politics of entertainment. One could say the same thing about Harry Potter and Star Wars.

Fixed.
[ Points to jar of pickled eggs. ]

While I’m on the subject: Is this guy a first offender or a repeat offender? If the latter, perhaps some time in a Correction Booth would be appropriate.